The Roadmap to Somatic Healing

This program incorporates the very best, evidence based, somatic exercises that have an extensive, proven history of impacting the brain and nervous system in order to alter your baseline to something more flexible, adaptive and resilient.

Foundational Perspective:
The limbic system, the amygdala (part of limbic system), the hindbrain – all instinctive/reactive parts of the brain do not respond well to being told you reject them, you are afraid of them, or that you demand they respond a certain way. They are like a dog or reptile. You can only establish an attitude or environment in which they begin to slowly feel comfortable and respond differently. In addition, we now know that the gut biome (mostly bacteria), the heart and other organs communicate to the brain as much as vice versa. For this reason, I consider most of your internal experiences and responses, experiences and responses of your “colony”, not of you as a conscious being. Therefore, NONE of these exercises are specifically built to immediately create comfort or calm because you don’t have direct control over your colony. All of these exercises are designed to establish a non-judgmental attitude, to build an intimate knowledge of your own body’s way (your colony’s way) of holding experiences and how it responds to external (things happening to you) and internal stimuli (things you remember, imagine, think). First, you will respond to what you discover with a neutral or scientific attitude of learning and later with presence, compassion and/or gratitude. You will become a leader, parent and caretaker of your colony, with such skill and calm that your brain and body will find the trust that they seek with you, instead of seeking it out in the world.

Physiological, Evidence Based Facts that Support Healing:

• Like every human being on earth, your nervous system has an innate and stubborn ability to recover from severe, intense trauma and repetitive negative experiences. Animals can have traumatizing, near death experiences weekly and recover to normalcy. The difference is that humans internalize shame of the ways in which the body dumps trauma and when humans abuse other humans, we almost always add shame and fear of healing as part of the abuse.

• Your colony, your inner child, the limbic system, the visceral bodily response, does not know the difference between what you imagine and what you experience. Every athlete, business person, elite performer, anyone who is highly successful knows that deep repetitive visualization actually changes how your brain and body perform in the moment. The truth is that it rewires your brain.

• Eye movements and other gentler forms of bilateral stimulation have been documented to reengage the areas of the brain that moderate memory, trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and depression. EMDR has also been documented to result in an increase in mass of the right hippocampus, an area of memory processing in the emotional hemisphere of the brain. A loss of mass in the right hippocampus has been noted as a correlate of chronic PTSD. The mass of the right hippocampus increased with use of EMDR and healthy blood-flow increased in the left cortex, especially the left prefrontal cortex.
Things You May Experience as You Process Intense Responses

As noted before, one of the challenges humans have in dealing with trauma, is that when it is at the hands of abusers, bullies or manipulative people, the abuse always comes with a heavy dose of shame at any self-defensive reaction. In this way, the abuser locks the victim into a cycle of abuse, response, then shame-based suppression of defensive response that leaves the victim unable to process their experience and heal. This leaves them at the mercy of the abuser. For this reason, many people who come into trauma therapy are actually defended against healthy responses that they need to heal. Here are a list of these possible healing experiences.

• Grief and crying.
• Intense anger or fantasies of harming the perpetrator.
• Intense anger or fantasies of harming self.
• Body shaking or shivering (this is particularly common with violent trauma)
• Body freezing (a coping skill when not being noticed is safer)
• A strong flush of heat from the core (dumping fight or flight energy)
• Sweating (see above)
• Dissociation or detachment

How do I Know I am Succeeding?
Psychology is an art, a philosophy, and a practice relying on anecdotal evidence as much as hard science. As set out above, I have put together a program relying, as much as possible, on documented, reliable physiological scientific truths. How do we track reliable progress for something that is so subjective, i.e. what I experience emotionally, cognitively, and somatically?

There are some reliable indicators of objective, physiological changes in how your nervous system is wired and how it will respond to stressors.

• Rapid Recovery or Reorientation after/during a triggers
◦ Life is still life, and everyone gets triggered, anxious or overwhelmed sometimes. The reason some people are ok with this is because their nervous system does not lock onto intense activation and stay there for hours, days, weeks or even months (severe PTSD locks on and can last for decades). When you have built in enough resources and skills, your nervous system will develop a flexibility and responsiveness such that even with a serious trigger, it will quickly dump the anxiety (charge) and return to an adaptive, calmer level. When this happens you are well on your way to a significantly different experience of life.

• Naturally Occurring Thoughts of Creativity and Realistic Enjoyable Solutions
◦ People believe that your cognitive experiences create your emotional state. This can be true (CBT relies on it), but I have found that what people call the mind (their conscious thoughts) tends to be driven by deeper brain and body systems of threat response. People with PTSD, anxiety or depression experience near constant thoughts with consistent themes of fear, paranoia, anger, hopelessness and suffering. They are unable to change or stop these thoughts. As you begin to internalize your resources, build resiliency and rewire your brain, you will naturally experience more positive, creative, calm thoughts. To experience this as a way of life is revolutionary. To know that you can expect this most of the time is often a massive shift for people. For example, a teacher struggling with PTSD, explains a concept and a student raises their hand and says “I don’t get it”. The teacher, struggling with an inner foundation of threat and hopelessness will immediately be overwhelmed by thoughts like “I’m a bad teacher”, “I don’t know how else to explain it” “what a stupid student, why can’t they just figure it out”. A teacher with a resilient, flexible, well resourced nervous system will experience thoughts like, “That student needs a visual”, “I’ll think it through and review it tomorrow with a different explanation” “Let me ask the student what part was confusing and I’ll explain that with more detail”. The resourced teacher doesn’t have to force themselves to think this way. A resilient, flexible, well resourced nervous system does this naturally and often, in response to almost everything!

• The ability to reminisce about past negative experiences while feeling safe now, experiencing profound compassion for self and others.
◦ A human being with an overwhelmed nervous system responds from the amygdala, a brain center that only does fear, threat assessment and responds in a very black and white manner. This means; people, jobs, experiences, loved ones can only either be neutral/meaningless or present as a threat. People who experience this, note that everything in life is either a battle or seems empty of pleasure. There is no real complexity, no creativity, no possibility or curiosity about things. All the joy as been taken out (because survival isn’t about joy). With a resilient, flexible, well resourced nervous system people can think about past suffering while feeling safe now. A far greater portion of their brain and body’s wisdom is available to them, offering complex, profound feelings, insights and connections to past, self, others, future. There is a lot to say about how people’s philosophy and attitude changes, but since this is about noting objective, measurable things – people can revisit old traumatizing experiences without overwhelm, without feeling shame, guilt or current fear. All the wonder, power and complexity of the human brain is being resourced to relate to that past experience.

• Triggers Go Away
◦ This is closely related to the above, but is much broader. A trigger is any stimulus, a smell, an experience, a taste, a look, a person, a personality style, weather, a thought, that triggers an overwhelming sense of threat and anxiety. We often are not even sure why the trigger exists and might have been separated from our memory of the event that taught our nervous system to respond that way. Thus, as we move throughout life, some people are walking through a minefield and never know when some smell or someone’s facial expression is going to result in a trauma reaction, hours, days or weeks of sleeplessness, anxiety, trying to avoid another trigger. With a resilient, flexible, well resourced nervous system, with past traumas reprocessed, traumatic responses dissipated, people begin to notice that things that used to trigger them and take hours or weeks to get over, just don’t trigger them anymore. Without cataloging someone’s triggers and measuring cortisol levels in laboratory conditions, that is about as objective as we can expect.

To summarize objective measures or indications of resiliency and adaptability.

• Rapid recovery or reorientation after/during triggers
• Naturally occurring thoughts of creativity and realistic enjoyable solutions
• The ability to reminisce about past negative experiences feeling safe now, experiencing profound compassion for self and others
• Triggers diminish in intensity or go away

Skill Set (built in the following order):

Basic Breathing – using 2-3 breathing techniques to even out our nervous system response or simply to tune into our body’s expression of thoughts, experiences, emotions (somatic).
Gendlin’s Focusing – pure non-judgmental attunement to your body’s expression of comfort, neutrality or discomfort.
Trauma Resiliency Model – a purely somatic approach that strengthens the foundation of somatic attunement through continued awareness of your somatic experiences, adding images, memory and narrative resources or body movements to which your body responds with neutral, healing or pleasant states.
Attachment Focused-EMDR – a cognitive, emotional, social, somatic approach that uses all the skills of the previous 2 approaches while specifically targeting developmental needs using images, memories and narrative resources carefully tailored to those experiences or difficult identity beliefs requiring healing. Here bilateral stimulation (eye movements, tactile or auditory simulus) is incorporated.

General Practice Trajectory and Development of Skill Sets:

• Month 1, Basic Breathing
◦ Weeks 1 & 2 basic breathing
▪ Tummy breathing
▪ 3/5/10 breathing
▪ Somatic self-hypnotic routine (My right foot is warm and heavy)
◦ Weeks 3 & 4 continued breathing, incorporate focusing skill
▪ Breathing
▪ Body Scan
• Pleasant/neutral – bring presence and gratitude (focusing)
• Unpleasant – bring presence and compassion (focusing)
• Month 2 TRM visualization/resourcing/tapping skills
◦ Noticing – “Is that pleasant, neutral or unpleasant?” “Notice that” “Just go with that”
◦ 80/20 – 80% of focus on pleasant or neutral area, 20% on unpleasant area, “just notice that”
◦ Pleasant or neutral resource: an image, memory, fiction, picture, pet, relationship, unencumbered by complications (e.g. My grandfather was a resource but he died and it makes me sad to think about him).
◦ When I happen to experience a response that is neutral or pleasant in response to breathing, images or memories, I tap it in with bilateral stimulation for 10-15 alternating taps.
• Month 3 Attachment Focused – EMDR, history taking and resource development
◦ Developmental History – what you know from conception to today.
▪ Genogram – How your experiences are situated in generational trauma and experiences of grandparents, parents, siblings to you.
▪ Identify significant experiences – what they contributed in developmental nutrition or what emotional/cognitive/developmental nutrition they lacked.
▪ Identify perseverant or pervasive identity or belief themes (e.g. it’s my fault, I’m worthless, the world is incredibly dangerous)
▪ Identify the most significant, most memorable, earliest experiences connected to those beliefs, responses or themes.
▪ Of the above, choose targets that bring the clearest somatic, emotional or cognitive discomfort/activation
▪ If memories fail (and they sometimes do) we will use somatic response alone to begin processing.
◦ Building Resources
▪ Resources are images, memories, stories, ideas, spiritual beliefs, historical characters, alternative universes, friends, imaginings that your body responds to with honesty (connection to childhood suffering) or with healing.
• If a resource is accurate to the lack, you may experience grief and anger as you begin to realize how unfair your experiences were and how starved for healthy experiences you were.
• If a resource is accurate to the lack, you may experience relief, love, resiliency, excitement, profound wisdom/thoughts as you realize what it is possible to have in your life now.
• When, with your therapist, you will use bilateral stimulation to reprocess the developmental experiences.
• Resource examples: nurturing mother, loving father, spirit guide, mentor, protector, friend, teacher, aunt, uncle (the list and its refinement depends on the emotional malnutrition of your childhood experiences and so resources must be tailored to and attuned to your specific experiences)
• Month 4, Incorporating eye movements (Formal AF-EMDR only with therapist)
◦ You will continue to practice and incorporate all of the skills you have learned, inside and outside of therapy
▪ Breathing – this is becoming second nature.
▪ Focusing – you have an intimate awareness of your body and mind and respond with non-judgment, compassion, gratitude and leadership or parenting presence.
▪ TRM and AF-EMDR imagery and resourcing.
◦ Identify a theme or experience to which you want to rewire your responses
▪ Identify response
• somatic (my stomach hurts)
• cognitive (I’m horrible)
• emotional (sadness)
• SUDS – It’s subjective, but quantify it with a scale by which you can track changes (0=bliss, 10=unbearable distress)
▪ Bring up an appropriate resource or refine/develop one that fits that developmental lack, troublesome theme or somatic response.
• Again, if a resource is accurate to the lack, you may experience grief and anger as you begin to realize how unfair your experiences were and how starved for healthy experiences you were (your brain/body revisits the traumatized memory and tells you what it was like).
• Again, if a resource is accurate to the lack, you may experience relief, love, resiliency, excitement, profound wisdom/thoughts (your brain/body revisits the traumatized memory and wires it differently or wires it to resourced parts of the brain)
• Either way, process, process, process – tapping, tappers, eye movements.
• Month 5 and Beyond
◦ Guided by your developing instincts and your therapist, you cycle through various stages, healing your body’s response to specific themes or triggers.
▪ You notice a developmental lack or troublesome theme, build a matching resource and process. You return as often as needed until you cannot seem to generate a traumatized, anxious or negative response to the content.
▪ Time for future templates and transfer to life experiences – once a target no longer elicits a troublesome response, you can construct an image or a movie of experiencing something similar in the future and build in the kind of response you would like to have. You can and should bring in the same resources to support you.
• Process with bilateral stimulation until you get very little charge from thinking about it.
• When you can, take on life challenges that mimic that past circumstance or theme and enjoy the challenge and proof that your nervous system, indeed no longer responds with intense activation or shutdown, leaving you free to pursue life’s joys and challenges unencumbered by past traumas or unhealthy learning.
• 1 Year
◦ There is evidence that to truly rewire the brain requires, at minimum, a year of consistent, repetitive, focused work. If you have worked the program and no longer feel a significant charge in response to anything (unless it is appropriate, e.g. falling over a cliff should result in some major intense fear), you should continue to utilize your skill set. Some people do this in the context of therapy, some people do it mostly on their own, with occasional check-ins and some people just move on. Regardless, trust the biology. If you work these skills and connect to them over a year’s time, you WILL see significant adaptive differences.
◦ Caveat: Don’t get caught in the idea that you need to eliminate everything that makes you anxious or uncomfortable. If you have a predisposition to feeling nervous about public speaking, you don’t have to completely eliminate your anxious response, as long as it is not blocking you from moving your life forward in the ways that you want.

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Map to Recovery from Developmental Trauma

One of the biggest challenges for people working through developmental trauma is trying to figure out, what pain is healing, what pain is just more misery? How long will this take? Are the things I’m experiencing “normal”? Why do I feel better and then go back to feeling, sometimes, even worse than when I started?

 

So I sought to answer this question for myself after years of my own journey and years watching and supporting others on this journey, I tried to answer, in a direct, concrete way:

 

What is a reasonable path to expect when healing from developmental trauma?

 

1st, I’m seriously uncomfortable, I don’t seem to learn or evolve. I get more mature perspective and ideas, but my reactions and actions stay the same and I get the same outcomes. I can’t sleep. I feel scared and small very often. Relationships seem often impossibly painful or difficult. I know I should want to be more ambitious in life, but I really feel like crawling into a hole and hiding. I know I’m smarter than I seem, I know I’m more capable than I seem, but I’m exhausted halfway through the day, just fighting off anxiety, depression, anger and fear.

 

2nd Perspective and neurological groundwork. Through talk and study (with or without a therapist), I come to realize there is nothing sick, weak or different about how my mind and body operates, with the exception that I’ve had some intense experiences at important developmental stages. I build an understanding that I am not my nervous system, that it, like an animal, has been habituated to some uncomfortable (at times, even extreme) emotional and physical responses. I’m still in denial and am not sure those experiences are really abuse or traumatizing, but I realize that what was wired in, can be unwired. Regardless of whatever caused it, I think it’s possible to change it. This comes with a realization that is both a relief, but also a challenge – you can’t talk (or think) your way out of what you experienced your way into. That’s not how the brain works. The bulk of this phase is about understanding that even if I seem unable to feel hope, there are concrete, proven scientific exercises that will alter my nervous system in a way that relieves me. I can’t imagine how that feels, but I take a leap of faith that maybe this might work.

 

3rd I begin cautiously engaging in breathing, meditation, EMDR and somatic resourcing, bilateral stimulation. I start exercising, eating better, trying to sleep better. Two possibilities come of this.

  1. I feel a little bit better and this is really exciting. If a little work can bring a little relief, let’s go after this. All of a sudden, I’m all about connecting to my body, meditating, bringing up calming resources. I feel hopeful and I take this practice and run with it (caveat, this hope is going be dashed temporarily, it’s a predictable part of the process). I’m begging friends and family to try it, I’m ready to heal, I’m ready to heal the world.
  2. The instant I start meditating, breathing or noticing my body’s reaction, I am overwhelmed by the amount of anxiety, feelings of horror, doom, I struggle with suicidal thoughts. Not only has therapy not helped me, but I feel far worse. I desperately fight my way back to old coping skills, distract, ignore, work too much, tell myself, I’m just being a baby, life is hard for everyone.
    1. I give up (don’t give up! It doesn’t stay this way!)
    2. I ask my therapist, what in the hell, I feel way worse, is it supposed to happen like this?

4th I’ve had mixed results. Maybe I was somebody whose first response was total overwhelm and I had to talk myself down, come at it more gently and finally experience some mild relief and hope for the possibility of hope. I proceed really cautiously and realize this is going to take some time and for the most part, nobody can tell me exactly how long. Maybe I was the person for whom it worked, and I went after it, but in a while I got tired – why do I have to work this hard just to be ok? I barely have time to be a human being. I’m starting to get stressed out by being forced to do all this self-care in order to just get near a neutral level of functioning. I might feel doomed again, I might have suicidal thoughts. There must be something wrong with me if I have to work this hard just to be “normal”.

 

5th, Whether or not I was the person who started fast and had to slow down or the person who started with overwhelm before seeing some relief, I realize, either way, this is going to take some time. It definitely works, I’ve proven it several times, but I’ve also gotten tired and overwhelmed from the process. My dream of throwing down a couple thousand dollars on therapy for 3 months and being totally free of it are gone (this is possible for PTSD caused by car accidents, etc. for people who had largely functional parents and healthy developmental experiences. 3 months is not reasonable for most people).

 

6th, I’ve achieved some mastery of the skills. I begin to realize, that I no longer have to consciously slow my breathing in stressful situations. I notice that my body has internalized some of the skills and it feels like a normal adaptive response to stress, it feels like what other people look like when they claim to be stressed – it’s difficult, but manageable. It’s not that massive overwhelm, feelings of doom, heart slamming in my chest, floods of adrenalin, feeling dizzy, being forced to leave the situation and take hours, sometimes, days weeks or months to recover from a triggering experience, feeling floaty and dissociated, feeling weak, feeling disgusted with myself, feeling helpless.

 

7th, the mastery of the skills brings a new realization, partially incredibly hopeful and joyful, partially scary. I can continue to work, continue to heal. I can manage the pace, I can do some of the work myself and save on therapy. However, there are still moments when I trigger, and struggle with intense discomfort. It’s not enough to destroy my life, but it does slow me down compared to someone who never had the experiences I had. I begin to realize, I am totally normal and in some ways, I experience things that other people will never understand, even if I explain it to them. I ALSO realize that even with an adaptive, functional nervous system, life is still hard.

 

8th, I have internalized so many of the skills that the larger portion of it is an unconscious response, that I feel grateful and proud to have as part of my adaptation. I feel more like a part of the human race. I’m now beginning to pursue things out of a sense of curiosity, ambition, joy, rather than a race away from the fear of failing, of being discovered as a failure, homelessness or failed relationships. I mostly live in my body, I have healthy boundaries with others and I know how to slow things down and take care of myself.

 

9th, strangely, after all this work, after truly coming to trust the process, after earning an effortless skill for myself, earning freedom from depression, after seriously reducing anxiety, starting to sleep well – I notice that I’m feeling really anxious again and nothing really helps. I also have bouts of anger. Why!? Anxiety is almost always a cover for intense grief. There are two realizations here and neither one is “just in my head”. They are the truth.

  1. I finally can truly see what was done to me, that it wasn’t my fault, that whatever reasons those people did what they did, it was a horrific and cruel thing to do to a child or a young person. When I see how normal I am and realize all those horrible feelings I struggled with were forced on me by abusive, sick people, I feel horror again, I feel rage, however, it is a clean rage. I know who was sick and who was not, who was violent and who was not. My anger is not mixed with shame or self denial.
  2. I also feel levels of grief. If this “normalcy”, this ability to adapt, cope and work through stressful times was always available to me, I realize that I’ve spent years, trapped by the horror that was put on me. My childhood is gone, my teens are gone, my twenties are gone, my thirties are gone. Multiple relationships have come and gone, multiple opportunities, people who believed in me, interesting job offers, chances to travel, dreams and aspirations, all buried and thrown in the trash, because I spent years struggling under desperate, hopeless feelings that wouldn’t have ever happened if I hadn’t been abused or neglected. I no longer feel like going back and fighting the people who did this, I know that’s unhealthy, but I’m still paying for what they did. I feel depressed, I sometimes feel like giving up, even though I know that my practice has worked, works and will continue to work. I am grieving and true grief isn’t something to be healed by therapy. It is a real intense sadness experienced over the loss of something precious and beautiful – my time, my life without a massive overlay of suffering and struggle. I am grieving and I cannot escape it. I must slow down again, make space for myself and take time to realize the enormity of what I experienced, what I recovered from, what it cost me and what I want to make of my life now.

 

9th, With the help of friends, or a good therapist, I work through the grief, continue my practice and begin connecting to a life, a way of being based in curiosity, joy, pleasant anticipation. However, there is one more interesting step in this process. I know I have succeeded. Most of my adaptations are now effortless and instinctive, I don’t often think about the past and what was done to me unless it is to glean some new learning. However, as I turn my attention away from the inner world that was so confused and undone by the cruel behavior of adults during my childhood, I realize that my outer world, my apartment, my relationships, my job, my savings account, my experiences, my achievements are real tangible things and they haven’t changed just because I have a new way of being. The tangible, objective things in my life were built out of and reflect the past fear, the confusion, the paralysis I once lived with. My external reality is somewhat disorganized, chaotic, and sometimes toxic. Some of the people I know have shifted and become beautiful friends during the process. Some of them I look at and realize they are just a reiteration of the small, sick cruel people I grew up with. Sometimes now, I feel anxiety again, I feel fear and sometimes I feel overwhelm because, it isn’t just thoughts and feelings now. I can either make something of my life or not and I realize, most people don’t have the time, the understanding or emotional bandwidth to deal with or sympathize with what I went through, what I achieved to just be alive and standing here. I’m going to have to build something and I’m on the same playing field someone else is, no excuses, unless I feel like going back and feeling like a victim and asking society for mercy. I don’t feel like that, I don’t want that so I go to work, imagining, building, failing, falling, succeeding, sometimes having old triggers, dealing with them, refocusing on building, enjoying, marrying, divorcing, fighting for a better life, a better world, resting, caring, daring, loving. I now know myself to be a significant presence within the human condition and it’s better for me, in fact it’s lucky I’m strong enough to have struggled through what happened because now, instead of fighting to survive, I begin to seriously enjoy helping others, giving others support, hope and a chance to thrive.

 

At this point, your therapist should have a conversation with you about taking a long break, or a permanent break from therapy, from “fixing yourself”. If there is a goal to therapy, it is the above paragraph. However, there are people who love talking through things and there is nothing wrong with that. If you enjoy working with a therapist on a periodic basis, by all means, continue. However, be sure that your therapist has evolved their approach to you and acknowledges and understands what you have achieved.

 

This process can be different for different people, but without fail, if you struggled through recovering from developmental trauma, you have gone through all or most of these steps, sometimes several times.

 

 

Living Mission

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” – Publius Terentius Afer

Nothing Human is Foreign to Me

My overarching mission is:

To mitigate suffering wherever possible. To strengthen and increase resiliency, joy, compassion and curiosity. To normalize the wide spectrum of human emotions, thoughts, behaviors and experiences. To aspire to live in the meaning of a phrase a client once said to me “nothing human is foreign to me”

My primary professional resources are:

The body/mind/spirit/biome/colony’s natural, predictable ability to heal, balance and pursue joy.

A foundation of compassion, understanding, humility and humanity

My tools are:

  • A lengthy and rigorous study of and fascination with the human condition
  • A rigorous pursuit of images, narratives, ideas, philosophies, imaginings, possibilities that clear space for the body/brain/gut biome to heal itself.
  • A rigorous program of breathing and non-judgmental noticing of all spectrums of lived experience, intense, terrifying, neutral, joyful, hopeful.
  • A studied, curiosity and science-based knowledge of the central and peripheral nervous system, the body, what works for it, what doesn’t and what how it communicates to the experiencer.
    • Extensive training and knowledge of how trauma presents, how it is stored in the brain and nervous system and most importantly, how it can be healed.
  • Insight into and an informed respect for every coping mechanism because it has helped someone survive until now.
  • Daily maintenance of professional and personal boundaries with clients
    • Respect for the client’s expertise, wisdom and knowledge of their own lives (my expertise in a particular field or area does not render others inferior or helpless in any way).
    • Constant personal and digital vigilance to protect the client’s narrative, identity, emotional and cognitive content from anyone’s knowledge unless I am mandated to report to a social agency in order to protect a child, an elder or a dependent adult.
    • Never leveraging my position of trust to interrupt or attempt to control clients’ relationships to others, no matter my opinion of that relationship (the client leads).Though I immerse myself in clients’ narratives, suffering and often hatred of those who harmed them, I respect the humans with which they choose to associate. I respect my clients’ choices once they have clearly made them.

I must be willing to rewrite, rebuild my mission, goals and tools in response to the realities and challenges that present themselves. Evolution is not just advisable; it is a mandate.

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